News Articles

“When you are working with people, you make relationships; when they are on TV they are faceless,” says Oxford humanitarian ethics scholar Hugo Slim. When he was working with Save the Children doing relief work during the famine in the Horn of Africa in the 1980s, he says he never broke down while surrounded by thin and dying people. But when he returned to England and watched the famous Band Aid music video with a slow motion image of a skinny child from a refugee camp in Korem, Ethiopia where he had once worked, “Then I cried, watching it.”

Endometriosis affects 10 percent of reproductive-age women and can seriously affect a woman’s quality of life and cause infertility, according to University of Washington professor of epidemiology Victoria Holt. A new study of women in the Northwest shows that endometriosis is linked to organochlorine pesticides. While these pesticides are for the most part no longer used in the U.S. — with the exception of some doctor-prescribed lice treatments — their effects linger in the environment and wind up in the bodies of women.

Does 11th and Willamette feel like it’s missing something? Maybe that’s because Sweet Potato Pie has moved to the Whiteaker.

Sweet Potato Pie has been selling clothes, hemp products and local glass art for the last 16 years. After being given a 60-day notice on her lease, owner Elizabeth Thompson immediately set her sights on her new location at 775 Monroe St., near Sweet Life Patisserie.

It’s too late to register for the Regional Prosperity Summit that began Thursday morning, Nov. 14, at the Ford Alumni Center, but the event carries over at 8:30 am Friday at Hilton Garden Inn, 3528 Gateway St. in Springfield. Contact Beth Forrest at 682-5882 or email beth.l.forrest@ci.eugene.or.us.

• John Nichols and Bob McChesney will speak on “Dollarocracy: The Money and Media Complex that is Destroying America” at 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 14, at the UO Knight Law Center, Room 175. The event is sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center on campus. Their new book TheDeath and Life of American Journalism investigates the role of money and the control of news media.

She writes about politics, religion, sexuality and gender — all in unreal worlds through the controversial genre of science fiction — and contests the conventional rules of grammar. Ursula K. Le Guin’s distinct style has been recognized and awarded for decades, she and will speak from 6:30 to 9 pm Friday, Nov. 8, at UO’s EMU Ballroom for the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Center for the Study of Women in Society.

The Amazon Creek Headwaters appear doomed following the latest Oregon Court of Appeals decision, but local folks who have been fighting for more than a decade to preserve this pristine area next to the Ridgeline Trail have not given up. They are urging citizens to email or write the Eugene City Council to ask them to set aside the money that is in the voter-approved city parks bond for natural areas to purchase at least 18 of the 47 acres owned by Martin and Leslie Beverly. The family is reportedly asking $2.5 million for the 18 wooded acres.

Construction on Capstone’s 13th and Olive student housing project is continuing, but representatives from the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters (PNWRCC) say that after complaints from workers employed by multiple contractors, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) and other agencies are investigating the project.

The emails read like something from the New York Post or TheNational Enquirer, not like messages that would be copied to the Eugene City Council, the mayor and the city manager. Former county administrator Liane Richardson’s ex-husband Mark Richardson fired off a volley of angry exchanges with his ex into the public record late in the evening of Oct. 23 and kicked off an investigation by the Eugene Police Department (EPD) and more questions about Liane Richardson’s tenure at Lane County.

The most common type of Clean Water Act discharge permit in Oregon is the one for facilities that discharge industrial stormwater. In Lane County, about 120 facilities discharge to local waters pursuant this permit, and these facilities are required to monitor their discharges four times a year and submit monitoring results to regulatory authorities (either DEQ or the city of Eugene) by July 31 each year.

Mercedes Russell may have gone from Springfield to Tennessee, but she will have some of her hometown’s support system with her as she starts her collegiate career at one of the biggest powerhouses in women’s basketball. Bill Wagner, her former head coach at Springfield High, will be in attendance when the Lady Volunteers take on the North Carolina Tar Heels in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Nov. 11 in a battle of top-10 teams. And he couldn’t be more excited to see her in action on the big stage.

Just over three years ago, Elliot Glaser-Flynn enrolled at Network Charter School and joined Youth for the Education and Prevention of Sexual Assault (YEPSA), a group whose mission is to end gender violence through education and action. Now, at 18, he’s the project manager of the first ever Youth Empowerment Symposium, which will take place Sunday and Monday, Nov. 10-11, at the Hilton downtown. The event will include 12 workshops, meals, a keynote presentation by Cree Gordon and a concert Sunday evening at WOW Hall.

Eugeneans are still pondering the boom in student housing and wondering when it will end. In light of the overbuilding (see our cover story Oct. 10) we predict several big projects on the drawing board will be shelved before groundbreaking. College enrollment has peaked, so the big out-of-state investors have been counting on drawing tenants from existing apartments and houses all over town. That’s happening to a degree, but Eugene is not a typical college town.

• ODOT is holding a series of open houses about intercity passenger rail service between the Eugene-Springfield area and Portland-Vancouver, Wash., and providing input on the evaluation results. The next meeting will be from 5 to 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 7, at the Linn-Benton Community College Calapooia Center, 6500 Pacific Blvd. SW in Albany. See OregonPassengerRail.org or contact Jill Pearson, (503) 986-3313 or info@oregonpassengerrail.org.

The mood was slightly tense at the North Eugene High School gym last week as parents, teachers, children and college students prepared to meet Nancy Golden, Oregon’s new chief education officer for the Oregon Education Investment Board and former superintendent of the Springfield School District.

Yet another non-partisan contender is in the running for the East Lane County Commissioner position currently held by Faye Stewart. Jack Schoolcraft will also be facing Jose Ortal, Joann Ernst and Kevin Matthews in the May 2014 primary.

The battle over Oregon’s federal O&C forestlands isn’t just taking place in the backrooms and hallways of Washington, D.C., it’s playing out on the internet, in emails and on video. A new video about the O&C lands out of Rep. Peter DeFazio’s office has made it through the House Franking Commission, which has to approve “unsolicited mailings of 500 or more pieces of the same matter” before taxpayer money is used to send it.

• ODOT is now doing fall roadside spraying in Lane County. Details for Highway 36 are listed below, Highways 99, 126 and others have been sprayed recently. You may reach District 5 offices at (541) 744-8080 or call their automated information line at (888) 996-8080 for more information.

• Highway 36 was sprayed by ODOT on Oct. 15 and 17 except for an 8-mile stretch adopted by Members of Beyond Toxics where weeds were cut and pulled by hand on Oct. 17.

Oregon’s vote on marriage equality is approaching T-minus one year and counting, and Oregon United for Marriage (OUM) is thriving. Eugeneans will mark the countdown with several house parties in the area and 100 throughout the state. The statewide campaign has hired a new director, and a Students United for Marriage chapter has been active in Eugene since late September. Statewide, petitioners have gathered 104,908 of 116,284 signatures required to make the November 2014 ballot.

Bee advocates and pesticide foes have been slowly gaining traction in their fight against neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides that many believe is contributing to the dramatic declines in honeybee populations. Groups such as Eugene-based Oregon Sustainable Beekeepers (OSB) and Beyond Toxics have been fighting to have local businesses remove neonics from their shelves and, while they haven’t fully succeeded, they have persuaded some local businesses to distribute information about the toxics.

Pelada Football Academy, a youth soccer academy founded as a nonprofit in February, aims to give more kids the opportunity to play and learn while seeking to complement and not compete with other soccer clubs by bringing in kids and their families who find recreational soccer too recreational or competitive soccer too competitive. These kids, in addition to clinics and scrimmages, will have a chance to play more than just soccer.